CRISIS IN THE BALKANS: ATROCITIES

CRISIS IN THE BALKANS: ATROCITIES; Acid and Smelting Vats Evoke Fear of Grisly Burials by Serbs

By CHRIS HEDGES

Published: July 7, 1999

MITROVICA, Kosovo, July 2—
Some NATO officials and local residents say the mile-deep shafts, the steaming smelting vats and the tanks of hydrochloric acid at the Trepca mine here were used as a vast disposal site for the bodies of ethnic Albanians killed by Serbian forces, and the international war crimes tribunal has agreed to investigate their suspicions.

Kosovar Albanians who live near the state-owned mine say bodies were brought to the mine in covered trucks escorted by Serbian jeeps and troop carriers. The first day they reported seeing the trucks was Sept. 17, 1998, the day Serbs began one of several major attacks to wipe out the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army.

The trucks continued to enter the mine frequently until a few days before NATO troops arrived in June, the Kosovars say.

Residents on the perimeter of the mine report that an unusual pungent, bittersweet smell, which they assumed to be burning bodies, frequently wafted up day and night from the chimneys that ventilate the huge, bowl-shaped smelting vats. No such smell, they say, had ever come from the chimneys before last September.

Heavily armed NATO peacekeepers from France searched the mine when they first came to secure the area, despite what the French said were Serbian attempts to keep them out. The mine is in the sector of Kosovo assigned to the French forces.

French soldiers reported to the tribunal in The Hague that they had uncovered piles of ethnic Albanians' clothes, shoes, family photos and identity documents in the smelting area and near the mine shafts, according to officers who have read the report.

The French also reported that the vats had been thoroughly cleaned before Serbian troops stationed in the complex left. The cleaned vats stood in stark contrast with the filth that characterizes the other parts of the mine.

There were several large ash heaps, the French report said, and French troops found numerous empty bins of hydrochloric acid.

There is growing concern among ethnic Albanians and human rights investigators that the evidence is being slowly removed or destroyed by Serbs still inside the complex. French soldiers who were in the mine a few days ago say some of the piles of clothes and belongings have disappeared.

A tribunal investigator said the site is on the list to be inspected, but would not comment on the French report. He did say that he had heard that the area around the mine had been booby-trapped and would have to be inspected with great caution.

An attempt to get to two sites inside the mine where stacks of clothes and documents were reported by French troops was thwarted by two nervous-looking men in track suits who carried AK-47 assault rifles.

Officials of the mine complex, where gold, silver, lead, zinc and cadmium are extracted, would not speak to reporters.

No one has even an estimate for how many Kosovo Albanians remain unaccounted for. Thousands have disappeared from villages and towns across Kosovo and investigators from the war crimes tribunal are uncovering an average of one mass grave each day. There are some graves, like the well publicized one in Izbica, that have been emptied of bodies. At Izbica, 142 bodies remain unaccounted for.

''There are a lot of smelting plants in Serbia,'' said Yves Roy, an investigator for the tribunal working at the Izbica site. ''If the bodies were taken to smelting plants in Serbia, we may never find them at all.''

Some French soldiers speculate that bodies may have been submerged deep in the shafts. Aziz Abraski, an Albanian who was the general director of the mine in the 1980's, said that because the mine's water pumps are operating, the mine shafts are not flooded.

Kavja Buran, an Albanian who was once director of the smelting operations, said: ''If corpses were trucked into the mine, they could easily have been disposed of in the vats of hydrochloric acid or burned in the smelting plants. The living could simply have been pushed into tunnels and had the air supply cut off. Mines are ideal places to carry out genocide.''

Halid Barahi, the local representative for the Kosovo Council for The Defense of Freedom and Human Rights, who kept a daily tally of the trucks that entered the mine, said that at the end of January every Albanian inhabitant in the Serbian-dominated part of Mitrovica, which surrounds the mine, was expelled and it became much harder to monitor activities there.

The Serb-held part of the city became a killing zone, he said. ''After January, Albanians who were taken by Serbs into this part of Mitrovica were murdered,'' he said.

Albanian leaders said they have implored the French to provide an armed escort to visit the mine and take samples from the ash heaps to do a chemical analysis.

But French commanders have refused, fearing that such a visit could lead to a violent outburst in a city so bitterly split between Serbs and Albanians. ''We are soldiers,'' said Col. Arnauld Bellynck, a senior officer. ''We are here to keep the peace, not investigate war crimes.''

Photos: Residents near a Serb-controlled mine in Mitrovica, Kosovo, say odors from a building that houses smelting vats, above, suggested burning flesh. (Tyler Hicks for The New York Times); At Izbica, below, 14 miles southwest of Mitrovica, 142 bodies are missing from what seems to have been a mass grave dug by Serbs then excavated as they withdrew. (Andrea Motta for The New York Times)